With Connected Education Reference Architecture, plug in your mind, connect with your dreams, and make a difference. Our education system must prepare citizens to thrive in a global economy, inspire constructive thinkers, instill personal responsibility, and empower passionate leaders. As we prepare next generation citizens who will drive economic growth, scientific advancement, social awareness, and personal satisfaction, we need to ask:

Are students learning the right skills?

Are students learning fast enough?

Is collaboration between private industry and education effective?

Are we successfully promoting research project intellectual property?

In many educational communities, students, parents, and mentors answer these questions with a resoundingly negative response. As education continues a technology driven transition towards new school models, we need to establish a roadmap plan that engages students, overcomes structural challenges, and builds connections into the educational experience.

Plug in your mind

Connect with your dreams

Everyone can make a difference

DevOps requires new practices and smart players. Panelists at the #C9D9 hangout shared their real world DevOps stories, and want to spark a continuous discussion. Continuous Discussions provide an open community forum on topics related to Agile, DevOps and Continuous Delivery.

WSO2 is helping enterprise retail organizations fulfill their vision of digital transformation and connect their business to the world across both digital and brick and mortar channels. WSO2 is pioneering how the Industrial Internet of Things, Big Data, API-centric architecture, and Cloud services augment digital business strategy and facilitate execution.

Retail industry companies are evolving their 1.0 eCommerce platforms to embrace 3rd party channels, recommendation engines, social media, and user analytics. APIs enable secure, controlled, and timely access to the aforementioned business capabilities delivered by partners. By integrating 3rd party capabilities, rather than building and hosting the capability internally, retailers are able to tap into an extended ecosystem of best-of-breed analytics, customer preference repositories, social sentiment, and business capabilities (i.e. payment, digital marketing, shipment expeditors). Some retailers are adopting APIs to tap into a channel of mobile application developers, external suppliers, and 3rd party digital storefronts. Mobile application developers can connect the retailer with mobile app customers and extend the reach and exposure of retail goods (especially in ‘flash sale’ or ‘sale liquidation’ scenarios). Retailers tightly integrated with external suppliers can use APIs to gauge product demand across the supply chain and enhance product availability. Retailers may also use APIs to integrate with 3rd party retailers and vendors who desire to offer a white-label digital storefront on the retailers digital property. Similar to a department store allocating floor space and advertising to a specific vendor.

Politics is all about power. Whether in Washington DC, Brussels, or Beijing, individuals jockey for advantage using the political process. The politics of APIs centers on ‘knowledge being power’ and ‘data content being power’. Individuals and corporations gain a powerful advantage in the API economy by enforcing content ownership, access privileges, and distribution rights to their advantage.

Harvard Business Review has made a not so shocking assertion, most IT teams desire a Path to Responsive IT. Yet only a minority achieve high IT responsiveness. Digital transformation is required to successfully seize business opportunity.

Choosing appropriate API security options will help you gain developer trust, increase API adoption, and buildan effective API ecosystem. While APIs are the ‘coolest’ and most effective mechanism to expose business functionalities out towards the outside world and inward to other teams, API security requires learning new technologies (i.e. OAuth, MAC token profiles, and JSON Web Token [JWT]) and retrofitting existing identity management architecture with token chaining and identity brokering.

Many mobile application developers and architects find API security and identity options are arcane, jargon-filled, and confusing. They frequently ask whether selecting one choice over another is appropriate – and you need to cautiously identify and isolate tradeoffs. A robust API security platform can help guide you in the right direction.

API Security Basics

Security is not an afterthought. Incorporate security as an integral part of any application development project. The same approach applies to API development as well. API security has evolved significantly in the past five years. The recent standards growth has been exponential. OAuth and bearer tokens are the most widely adopted standard, and are possibly now the de-facto standard for API security.

Enterprise IT must embrace Shadow IT today and establish a partnership that will move the business forward at the speed of now. By understanding the Shadow IT mindset, you can bridge the divide, accelerate solution development, and empower every team to build in an enterprise-safe manner. Start today, and take small steps towards a big vision that delivers a flexible enterprise IT environment that enables and empowers Shadow IT teams.Continue reading →

They rapidly deliver high quality software solutions that enable business penetration into new markets, create innovative products, and improve customer experience and retention. Unfortunately, most IT teams do not have an environment fostering the rapid iteration, streamlined workflow, and effective collaboration required to operate at the speed of now and capture business opportunity. Disconnected tooling, static environment deployment, and heavyweight governance across development and operations often impede rapid software cycles, minimize delivery visibility, and prohibit innovative experimentation.

Every successful, long-lasting model has a clear manifesto outlining goals and principles. Many DevOps adopters may not be aware of the DevOps Manifesto (created by Jez Humble @jezhumble) nor how successful DevOps requires keeping a clear focus on principles, practices, and value (instead of infrastructure tooling.

ALM PaaS bridges the development gap between corporate IT and distributed outsourced development activities. The traditional gap impedes system integration, user acceptance testing, visibility into project progress, and corporate governance. Stephen Withers describes an often true, and ineffective current ALM state:

” the CIO does not have visibility of the overall project: this is a major problem.”

A top CIO desire is to obtain portfolio-wide visibility into development velocity, operational efficiency, and application usage.

What solution or best practices do you see solving balkanized, silo development tooling, fractured governance, disconnected workflow, and incomplete status reporting when working with distributed outsourced teams or across internal teams?